METHODS FOR DIAGNOSING ETHNO-CONFESSIONAL TENSION IN THE REGIONS OF RUSSIA
Keywords:
Southern Urals, Western Siberia, latent tension, student youth, self-identification, confession, EthnicityAbstract
Based on extensive field materials collected via sociological methods in several regions of Western Siberia and South Urals in 2018 within the framework of the authors’ program of regional monitoring of extremist sentiments and manifestations among youth, the article examines the issues of national and confessional self-identification of student youth of Kuzbass, the Altai Republic, and the Chelyabinsk region. Regional specificity is discovered only in the Altai Mountains and is determined by the presence of several major ethnic groups in that region. The results obtained in Kuzbass and the Chelyabinsk region are practically identical. A series of questions representing the hierarchy of ethnic identity criteria allow diagnosing latent interfaith tensions maintaining a stable trend that has been recorded in the regions under study for several years. Moreover, the level of respondents’ hostile attitude towards the major confessions traditional for Russia is measured by regions.
